1.1.4-Safe-is-relative
Brick!Club 1.1.4 This is my first contribution to brick!club, so yay! It’s my first reading of it and I am loving this all so far. Onwards to the chapter: 'Place your expectations on him to whom there is no succession!' I really don’t understand that line and if anyone could help with it, I would greatly appreciate it. "What a broad back has death! What a wondrous load of titles will he cheerfully carry, and what hardihood must men have who will thus use the tomb to feed their vanity!" "See Monsieur Geborand, buying a penny-worth of paradise." These are just my favorite moments of the Bishop’s sassiness. "To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright." I’m a little confused about what it means to be “upright” if it does not mean to live without sin. "Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing instruction for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in, darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness." This part just makes me love the Bishop even more, which I didn’t think was possible. I love that he thinks the blame for the sin should be placed on the people who put the sinner in that position to commit the sin, and not the sinner himself. "As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel." I find it so disheartening that its such a surprise that a religious figure actually bases his beliefs on his religion’s holy book. It just echoes the distrust in the clergy that we saw with the outcry over the bishop taking his carriage allowance. "The cure is right. It is not his place, it is mine." Quick point of clarification: A cure is below a bishop in the church hierarchy, right? If so, I think this is such a perfect example of the bishop’s character. He takes it upon himself to do something that the man who is “lesser” than him, according to the church, thinks is beneath him. He does it because he thinks its his duty to do the right thing regardless of whether it technically is his duty. "It seems a sort of being which had some sombre origin of which we can have no idea; one would say that this frame sees, that this machine understands, that this mechanism comprehends; that this wood, this iron, and these ropes, have a will. In the fearful reverie into which its presence casts the soul, the awful apparition of the scaffold confounds itself with its horrid work. The scaffold becomes the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, and it drinks blood. The scaffold is a sort of monster created by the judge and the workman, a spectre which seems to live with a kind of unspeakable life, drawn from all the death which it has wrought." This description is just beautiful and terrifying. In a way it reminds me of Frankenstein and the monster. Commentary Caramarthenfan God/Jesus/the Trinity—the King of Heaven has no heir. My copy says it’s quote from St. Augustine, and the “him” is capitalized. Pilferingapples This is my first contribution to brick!club, so yay! Yay! Welcome aboard! After the last few days I am pretty convinced this is the BEST way to be reading this book, with an Erudition of Fans around to help wrangle out the tricky bits.:) It’s my first reading of it and I am loving this all so far. Onwards to the chapter: ‘Place your expectations on him to whom there is no succession!’ I really don’t understand that line and if anyone could help with it, I would greatly appreciate it. Sure! The Bishop is just referencing Jesus, or God, here. He’s basically saying don’t trust people, who are trying to look out for themselves, and are temporary; trust Jesus/God, the eternal. In an earthly sense, he could ALSO be talking about not trusting people who are overly concerned with their prospects or their posterity. Someone trying to leave behind an estate or ensure a future position is less inclined to respond to the needs of the moment. Also I *think* this has sometimes been used as the reason for church officials being required to practice celibacy— so that they won’t be concerned with leaving a vast estate Agree with pretty much everything you say here, so I’ll just cut to this: “It seems a sort of being which had some sombre origin of which we can have no idea; one would say that this frame sees, that this machine understands, that this mechanism comprehends; that this wood, this iron, and these ropes, have a will. In the fearful reverie into which its presence casts the soul, the awful apparition of the scaffold confounds itself with its horrid work. The scaffold becomes the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, and it drinks blood. The scaffold is a sort of monster created by the judge and the workman, a spectre which seems to live with a kind of unspeakable life, drawn from all the death which it has wrought.” This description is just beautiful and terrifying. In a way it reminds me of Frankenstein and the monster. which is FANTASTIC. I love that analogy. A thing created for bright reasons (yes, the guillotine was invented as a humanitarian measure— it was meant to ensure an easy, quick death, as opposed to pretty much any other method of the day) turned into a symbol of enduring horror by the way it was mistreated. FULL POINTS. :) Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Pilferingapples) That is a totally brilliant comparison.